Excerpt from a novel (long) in progress

The heat is less than it was. A breeze has blown in, and in Stella’s kitchen I stand with a bowl of artichokes flicking off stems, lopping off tops, yanking the tough outer leaves, and now I set a pot of water to boil and toss the naked white meat in. It takes a while to tender the artichokes with heat—that’s how Stella says it, tender with heat—so I wait, and when the artichokes are boiled and drained and cooled, I slice them thin, and with a smaller knife remove each furry choke—cut around and snap them free, toss them away. In a separate bowl I mix the lemon, oil, and garlic, add the sage and marjoram, the shreds of parsley and mint, and pour the whole thing over the chopped-up artichokes, then cover the bowl with a rag. I clear the counter, wipe my hands. Stella gives me the eye under the bridge of an eyebrow.

“Good enough,” she says. “Now start on the pears.”

“The pears?”

“Peras al horno.”

She tells me to wash the pears and peel them. To halve them, thumb out their cores, keep them fresh with orange juice. “Paradise,” she says, and she fits the knife to my hand, this one thin knife, and shows me what she wants. I have trouble near the stem, but now that trouble’s done and the pear snaps into two parts, clean.

“Pay attention.”